SE:IV Gold vs SE5 Demo: Basic UI

[Phoenix-D]

Part 3:
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System List: This has no equivilent in SE4. Improvements: The Filter list would be more useful if you could select multiple items. Like all report screens, the tabs seem to take up too much room. The additional sorting capability would be good, but some tabs could be combined (planet icon and size, in the planet list for example). The "layout control" option would be more useful if you could copy existing layouts and save them.

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Planets List: SE5 displays all the information SE4's screen did, but its split into multiple layouts. Creating a custom layout aleviates this problem, and still allows use of the new features like time to arrival. SE4 had multi-line displays- it showed picture, size, type and name on one tab for example. SE5 has single-item tabs, which allows for finer sorting. In SE4 you click to go to a planet, in SE5 you double-click. Both allow a right-click to access the planet detail screen. Both forget where you where if you use Goto Planet.

Advantage: Clear SE5. Improvements: Add a "SE4 style" tab to the default layouts for SE4 users. Remeber which planet the player used Goto on and start there the next time the screen is opened.

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Colonies List: The top-left screen has all the same info, and SE5 adds "number of races". SE4 filtered via side buttons, SE5 does it via the filter popup box (are we sensing a theme, here?). The screens are otherwise very similar except SE5 has more information and customizble layouts. SE5's list. Advantage: SE5. Improvements: As with System List and Colony list, some of the headings seem to take up too much room and could be combined.

[StarShadow]

Quote:

"Upgrade will sometimes add a number (12345) or a Roman Numeral (I, II) to the end of the name, but this isn't consistant. "

I've noticed that it is consistant (sort of), to me it's an interesting feature. If I make a ship and call it 'Dart Mk I', every time I upgrade it the 'I' increments to 'II' and so on. However any ship that doesn't have a roman numeral last, gets a random number, that needs to be fixed.

[Phoenix-D]

Not entirely true. A ship named Vomit A, on upgrade, turns into Vomit A II. I think it may be tied to the single-character thing at the end.

A ship named Alabama gets the 265657 thing. Some get none at all, which I really don't get.

[Will]

A few UI improvement suggestions:

Ship Design screens: allow right-click menu for filtering buttons, to bypass the dialogs. So changing for filtering from non-obsolete ships to non-obsolete units takes two clicks and small mouse movement, instead of three clicks, and much more mouse movement. Same for component filtering in the actual design window.

Cargo Transfer/Unit Launch/etc. screens: make the display collapsable. So if you have 100 sats in a group, and you aren't working with any particular satellite in the group, you can just collapse the group and have more screen space for anything else in the sector. This applies to the cargo/supplies/ordnance for individual items as well.

Treaty Negotiation: allow for this to collapse as well, so specific provisions do not appear until you select the higher-level provision it is under. For example, don't show the 5-30% in trade treaties until you select the Trade Percentage provision.

Systems/Planets/Colonies/Ships/Construction Queues screen: allow Layout and Filter buttons to have right-click menu access, to prevent needing to go through the dialog.

News Screen: Make a small view! While the pictures are pretty and all, I want to be able to see more than three news items at a time. And also, if a spaceyard constructs more than one item in a turn, put that all in one news report, instead of breaking them up into several.

Orders Buttons: it would be nice if the 18 orders buttons in the bottom right of the screen could be customized. So, in the early game, I could arrange it so the top six buttons are Move, Goto Waypoint, Colonize, Explore, Survey, and Resupply at Nearest, and arrange the other orders in customized submenu buttons. It would be even nicer if we could do this based on the context of what is selected, and save these layouts to distribute to others. Or... I could just start memorizing those hotkeys

System View: it would be nice to have the axis of rotation for panning be somewhere other than the center of the system. This one is completely pointless, really, it just makes things look cooler; you can set your camera over one of your colonies, and survey the system from that POV. Also, is there a way to turn off the hex grid? How about grid off, and keep the outer boundries for FOV? Also, clicking on a flag should highlight the sector the flag is attached to.


That's it for now, I'll probably come up with more later.

[Mephisto]

FYI: The latest version has an improved ship report screen which displays informations about a component just like in the ship report in combat.

[Phoenix-D]

Will: the ship-design right click menu is there. You have to right-click on the Design tab. Same with the component window. Same with ships/planets/colonies. Just right-click the tabs.

Log screen: click on the tab above the icon. Combining reports would be very nice, yes.

Orders: Ooo, good idea.

System: you can turn off the grid in..empire options, I think.

[Phoenix-D]

Part 4:

Ship/Unit screen: SE5 displays bases in space and mothballed ships/bases in addition to the info in SE4's upper-left box. In SE4 you can display ships, units, and/or fleets. In SE5 you can do the same and also show enemy/allied items, but you can only do one at a time. You cannot, for example, show units and ships at the same time as in SE4. the layouts are similar but SE5's General tab has slightly less information.

Advantage: Nil. Improvements: Same as with the other list screens. There's a lot of wasted space on the right side- putting commonly-used options back into those boxes from the Layout and Filter screens would save time. Also, showing fleets should show the fleets, not the ships in the fleets. In games with extremely large fleets, the fleet display option will be all but useless.

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[Captain Kwok]

Will said:Ship Design screens: allow right-click menu for filtering buttons, to bypass the dialogs. So changing for filtering from non-obsolete ships to non-obsolete units takes two clicks and small mouse movement, instead of three clicks, and much more mouse movement. Same for component filtering in the actual design window.

You can already use right-click to filter both items from their column header.

[Will]

Ok, didn't know about the right-click on column headers. Would still be nice to offer the same right-click menu for the buttons as well.

[MarkSheppard]

SEIV: You were capable of selecting which type you wanted, ships/bases or units/fighters/mines for you or the enemy easily with one click on a button to the side.

SE V: Now you have to:

Click on Filter

Click on button for which filter you want

Click on "Ok"

Three clicks.

SEIV : T3h win.